


Written On The Dotted Line

by zjofierose



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fate & Destiny, M/M, Soulmates, Stiles's Name, gratuitous polish, name mates, past Kate Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1865391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>written for a tumblr prompt found <a href="http://zainclaw.tumblr.com/post/87893884717">here</a></p>
    </blockquote>





	Written On The Dotted Line

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Written On The Dotted Line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6125139) by [DaintyCrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaintyCrow/pseuds/DaintyCrow)



> written for a tumblr prompt found [here](http://zainclaw.tumblr.com/post/87893884717)

Derek's always wondered about the writing. It's not the same for everyone; there seem to sometimes be similar fonts on some people, where others have something that is clearly a signature. It's fairly common that the writing's not a match for either namemate. Sometimes the name is calligraphed, sometimes a simple type face, sometimes delicate kanji. Whose handwriting _is_ it, that's what he wants to know- is it God's? Or some ancestor watching out from beyond the vale, able to see where your life will run and select an appropriate mate for you? An angel? A demon? Or is it all just so much coincidental melanin, a set of meaningless lines that humanity has decided to ascribe meaning to?

Who knows. He's no philosopher.

The leather band around his wrist is soft with age, the clasp freeing easily in under his thumb as he pops it open and settles the band on the edge of the sink. Some people never take them off; sleeping with them, bathing with them. He'd done that for a while, when he was dating _her_ , because he didn't want her to know, to see that secret part of him, but eventually the skin underneath had started to chafe and itch, so ever since then he's made sure to take it off every night and let his arm breathe.

He scrubs up, washing his face, brushing his teeth. He hasn't shaved in a couple of days, but he can't convince himself that he cares, so he rubs his face dry with the towel and sets his toothbrush back in the cup. A drop of water falls from his hairline to splat on his wrist, and he rubs the towel over it, absentmindedly tracing the letters on the inside of his forearm.

 _Czcibór_.

They're very dark, and heavy, like marker. Angular, sharp, irregular, like they were written by someone in a hurry, all jutting corners in spite of the fact that most of the letter shapes are round.

He picks up his band and flicks off the light. It doesn't matter, not really. He's failed at this like he's failed at every other thing presented to him. Czcibór, whoever he is, is better off without Derek anyway.

–

Stiles is sitting at his desk filling out applications while Derek lounges on his bed catching up on the Ultimates. He's not entirely sure when he started actually just... hanging out with Stiles, but it works for them. Stiles is better with an audience, not because he needs attention, but because he likes a sounding board. Derek likes the company, frankly; he's tired of being alone all the goddamn time, and all he has to do to hang out here is _mmm_ and grunt responsively every so often when Stiles makes one of his statements.

Stiles doesn't wear his armband all the time like Derek does; he wears it in public, mostly, but takes it off at home. It's generational, Derek thinks, which makes him feel old. It was still a thing when he was in high school, to keep your name covered, but the kids these days (five years later) have started to let them show, sometimes going so far as to decorate the letters, especially the girls. Lydia's name is surrounded by a lovely band of inked pink flowers. Scott, for some reason Derek can't fathom, got dark rings tattooed above and below his solidly printed _Allison_.

Stiles' band, sitting on the desk, is dark red terrycloth and stretchy. The writing on his wrist, which Derek can only see the shape of from across the room, is spidery and elegant, looping in a script from left to right. It's a short name, probably a girl's, he thinks, judging by the curlicues.

Erica'd asked him about it once, which surprised Derek, but Stiles had just smiled and looked away. “It's pretty common”, he'd said, “possibility is always with me.” She'd laughed, tangled her fingers with Boyd's, and let it go.

–

He'd asked his mom once, when he was maybe nine or so, how they'd decided to name him and his sisters. She'd laughed and shrugged.

“Your dad was all for going one extreme or the other- name you something so common that it almost frees you from the silliness of it all, let you find your own John or Mary and just decide to be happy, instead of looking your whole life for one person.” She rolled her eyes. “Or else name you something completely ridiculous, so that there wouldn't be any doubt when you met your match. Goodluck, or Elvis, or Lancelot. Theolinda for your sisters” She laughed again, gathering the papers in front of her into a stack and setting them aside so she could reach out and ruffle his hair. “I carried you for nine months and gave birth to you, so I named you what I wanted to.” She smiled, cupping his cheek with her warm, callused hand. “My cousin was named Derek, and I always liked it. So, Derek you are.”

He'd smiled back at her, pulling his sleeve down over the name on his wrist, believing with the faith of the young that Czcibór would turn up sooner, rather than later.

–

Paige had come first, and that was okay. They were young, and it was expected that you would date someone who was not your name-mate, maybe a couple someones. It was like practice, a dry run. Learn how to be a considerate partner, how to date, how to navigate around another person's wants and needs and schedule. He had ended up liking her kind of a lot, more, he thinks, than he was supposed to, and it had hit him hard when Jakobe had moved into their school the next year and shyly revealed the delicate _Paige_ scrawled across his skin, complete with a tenor clef. Derek had rolled his eyes in public, because _sheesh_ , talk about overkill, but... it had stung.

Possibly that lingering hurt is what had made him so amenable to Kate when she had turned up, all long legs and blond hair and intoxicating perfume dabbed into her exquisite cleavage. He'd wanted to show that it didn't matter, that Paige's dreamy expression and shiny new ring were irrelevant to him. After all, he had Czcibór waiting somewhere. Kate was just a distraction in the meantime. It didn't matter that she wasn't his. It didn't matter that they weren't fated. Who cared about fate? They were fucking, and it was good, and it was fun, and it was everything he'd ever wanted and yet nothing he wanted at all.

It didn't matter. _It didn't matter._

\--

“Oh, Christ on a cracker.” Stiles runs his fingers through his hair, managing to make even more of it defy the laws of gravity.

“Hmm?” Derek turns the page in his book. Captain America's being noble, and Spiderman's a whiny bitch. It's good stuff.

Stiles makes a disgruntled noise and drops his pencil onto his desk with a clatter.

“They want me to use my legal name on the application.”

Derek thinks about this for a moment. He doesn't know why it's never occurred to him to think about it, but no, of course 'Stiles' can't be his real name. Interesting.

“Why is that a problem?”

Stiles turns in his chair to face him, flexing his long fingers and shaking out his wrists.

“I got them to put Stiles as my name on my driver's license, which means I don't have any photo ID with my legal name on it, and they want me to have some.” His wide mouth is turned down at the corners, his eyes tired.

Yep, that's a complication, Derek thinks. He wonders which deputy Stiles bribed, wheedled, or cajoled into letting him use a nickname on his license.

“What's your legal name?”

Stiles waves a hand dismissively.

“It's a family name. Unpronounceable. I'm pretty sure even my dad can't say it right.”

Derek chuckles, leaning over on one elbow and resettling the book.

“Sucks for you. Stilinski's bad enough.”

“Don't I know it.” Stiles sticks out his tongue, but it's half-hearted. They like each other now, and the knowledge is warm in Derek's belly. “Stilinski's not even the original form. It was one of those ones that got butchered at Ellis Island cause the 'Murican intake officers couldn't spell Polish names.”

“Oh yeah? What was it?” Derek's genuinely intrigued now. He's got a couple of those in his family tree. Had a couple, anyway.

“Oh god,” Stiles rolls his eyes again, “it was something truly atrocious. I don't blame the officers at all. I think it was...” he screws up his face in concentration, “ _Styczyński_.”

Derek blinks.

“Wow. You weren't kidding. How many vowels does that even have?”

Stiles' wicked grin splits his face.

“One. Right at the very end.” He flings himself out of the chair and stumbles over his throw rug on his way to the door. “Hey, maybe if I have my social security card AND my birth certificate. Dad! DAAADDD!!!”

The door bangs gently against the wall in his wake.

–

After Kate, after the fire, after everything, he leaves Laura in New York and goes traveling. He becomes obsessed with the name, learning how to say it, where to look for it. It's Polish, apparently, though it also crops up in some other slavic countries as well. He buys a hard frame backpack and books a flight to Prague.

Two years he spends bumming around the former Eastern Bloc. He comes across thousands of names, but only twice does he find a Czcibór.

The first is an old man, one who eyeballs him shrewdly, and makes him say the name over and over and over again across pints of thick, dark beer until he's satisfied with Derek's pronunciation. Derek doesn't relish the thought of being bound to someone 60 years his senior, but he actually likes the old man a lot, so he finds himself slightly disappointed when he catches a glimpse of _Filomena_ under his fraying sleeve.

The second is a boy of about two years, all chubby cheeks and wide brown eyes. He adores Derek, and the feeling is mutual, but _Agneska_ wends its way down his plump forearm in a steady type face, so Derek gives it all up as a bad job and goes home.

He wears his band every day, and tries not even to look at the name. It's not like he doesn't know it already, anyway. He doesn't need to look to see it stamped on him for time and all eternity, a scar for a wound he's only starting to realize won't stop bleeding.

He refuses to think about it. His life is shit, and gets shittier. No one should be forced to be mated with him anyway. Czcibór is surely better off alone.

–

Because he's honestly curious, Derek puts down the book and swings his legs over the side of the bed. His left foot is halfway asleep, pins and needles prickling through the muscle and skin as he hobbles over to flop down in Stiles' desk chair. He shuffles carefully through the stack of papers, not wanting to mess up the order.

He's only skimming them, half listening to the sounds of the street outside, the other half of his attention on the Sheriff and Stiles' conversation downstairs. He turns over another document, and there it is. Application for on-campus housing.

Stilinski, Czcibór G.

This is what it feels like when your world stops, he thinks, when your mind goes blank with shock until you forget your own name, when gravity drops your feet out from under you and swoops up into your stomach until you don't know whether to laugh or dry heave.

_Stilinski, Czcibór G ._

He can't get his band off fast enough, scraping his skin with his nails as he tears at the leather, ripping it from his arm so that he can hold his skin next to the papers and look again. His hands are shaking too hard to read the words, so he sets the papers on the desk again, laying his arm next to them, underside up to the light.

The door bangs behind him and he turns unthinking, his arm out before him like a gift, an offering. He's terrified, elated, heartbroken and breaking, everything at once and everything he is, here in Stiles' decrepit desk chair, stomach crawling up his throat as Stiles takes him in.

“Dude, are you ok? You look like you've seen a...”

Derek must make some mute noise of appeal, because Stiles' eyes widen, then settle on the bared skin of Derek's wrist in front of him. His lips move as he reads the word, his skin blanching in shock, his eyes frantically latching on to Derek's form.

Stiles closes the distance between them with two steps, grasping Derek's outstretched arm in his, Stiles' thumb reverently tracing his own name like a brand before he hauls on Derek's hand.

“Yours... says...” Derek's voice is cracked and breathy, and he can't swallow past the lump in his throat, “yours, does it... say.”

Stiles settles Derek's hand on top of his own elegant script, pressing like he can meld Derek into his very bones. Stiles breathes it out, so soft he can barely hear.

“ _Derek_.”

 


End file.
